Ia Arsenishvili is a Georgian painter, her drawings are well-known among art lovers – she has been participating in local and international exhibitions for decades. Ia is from the Tetritskaro municipality, Kvemo Kartli region. She inherited a country house from her ancestors and returned to the city of Tetritskaro to launch a family hotel together with her 3 children. “Artist’s House” is a place with a special concept – each room is represented with its unique interior design decorated with Ia’s paintings, hand-made plates, porcelain dishes, and beautiful mirrors with colorful tiles. Annually, the place hosts Ia’s masterclasses and biennials, attracting Georgian artists, as well as foreign visitors.

Ia Arsenishvili is one of the winners of the EU-funded project “Rural Development for Sustainable Growth of the Tetritskaro Municipality”. Among the applications for the second grant competition of the project, Tetritskaro Local Action Group (LAG) considered Ia’s project to be especially important to support the development of rural tourism, as the latter is one of the main priorities of the ENPARD Tetritskaro project. With the grant amount of 32 722 GEL obtained in the framework of the project, an art workshop will be arranged in the yard, renovation of an existing conference hall will be accomplished, bathrooms and furniture will be added to the house, and the yard will be improved with the new pavement.

The beneficiary believes that the implementation of the project will allow her to hold more larger-scale masterclasses and biennials, thus, make the Tetritskaro Municipality more attractive for local and international art-lovers and tourists:

“Before I started running my family hotel, I got an international guide certificate and traveled to lots of regions of Georgia to get acquainted with how other family hotels work. I often host tourists who are not accompanied either by guides or translators. When I realize that they know nothing about the place, I try to introduce the municipality, its history, and often take the guests for sightseeing, too”.

As usual, Ia spends a lot of time in the “Artist’s House”, trying to offer the most comfortable and diverse services to her guests. The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly changed Ia’s agenda. at the first stage, she stayed in the municipality and helped local vulnerable families with basic items and food. However, after the municipality was quarantined, she returned to Tbilisi to her children and continued working. Unfortunately, she cannot support remotely those locals left without basic income and food during the crisis.

Recently, Ia heard about the Tetritskaro Local Action Group (LAG) and the Association Rural Development for Future Georgia joint donation campaign, aiming to help local vulnerable families and decided to donate her paintings to the charity fund:

“Anyone will be able to electronically select a painting from the album that matches their taste. The more expensive a painting is sold, the better, as the money will be directly transferred to the charity fund. Information concerning how the LAG is supporting concrete families with the donated money will be transparent and gradually updated on the LAG and RDFG web pages”.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Georgian healthcare system effectively copes with the pandemic caused by the novel Coronavirus. However, in some regions of the country the number of people infected with the Covid-19 is relatively high, making it necessary to declare the quarantine in those areas. Unfortunately, the Tetritskaro municipality is one of them. Mentioned reality has further aggravated the daily lives of the families left without the basic income and food.

Considering the reality the municipality now faces, the Tetritskaro LAG and RDFG are raising funds to help the most vulnerable families living in Tetritskaro and children who, due to lack of proper equipment, do not have access to the e-learning materials and as a result fall behind school curriculum activities. For more information, please, visit: www.tetritskarolag.ge or www.rdfg.ge

Tetritskaro Local Action Group (LAG) was established with the support of the EU-funded ENPARD project “Rural Development for Sustainable Growth in the Tetritskaro Municipality” implemented by Association Rural Development for Future Georgia (RDFG). It is one of the twelve LAGs established with the EU support in different municipalities across the country. The LAG serves as a multisectoral cooperation platform and brings together civil society, private and public sectors to promote the local development process in the municipality. The Tetritskaro LAG, with a membership of 89 Tetritskaro residents, represents 20 local communities, including national and religious minorities, as well as IDPs and eco-migrants residing in the Tetritskaro municipality.

In 2018, the Tetritskaro LAG developed the local development strategy for 2018-2022 and defined the priority areas for increasing the quality of life in the municipality, which are: 1. environmental protection, natural resource management, and disaster risk reduction. 2. Support the competitiveness and modernization of agricultural and non-agricultural initiatives. 3. Promoting rural tourism development. 4. Development/rehabilitation of rural infrastructure. Within the framework of the grant component of the project, 65 rural development initiatives have been supported so far, with a total cost of more than 5 mln Gel, targeting 48,562 direct and indirect beneficiaries.

Author:
Nina Kopaleishvili – Communications Officer, RDFG; nkopaleishvili@rdfg.ge